Assortative mating worked in the past, and took several decades to unravel, mainly because sexuality in women was viewed completely differently.

The manosphere tends to glorify the 1950s, but women weren’t any more sexually attracted to average men than they are now. Some poisoned their husbands, some had affairs as Chads mistress, and most just dealt with the lack of sexual attraction.

But the only reason this situation “worked” is because both women and men were raised to believe two things about sex:

  1. Sex is for the pleasure of the man, to keep him happy.
  2. Sex is not something a woman does/participates in, it’s something that’s done to her.

That combined with heavy societal shame for any women that expressed horniness, and it’s natural to see why most women went along with a man they weren’t attracted to, because they likely didn’t fully understand their own sexual desire having never gotten a chance to explore it.

Now, with the onset of the sexual revolution, as decades pass, women are now in control of their sexual desire. They understand which men turn them on, and which ones don’t. If a man’s wife isn’t into him, what was once a common occurrence is now viewed as a serious flaw in the relationship.

With that said, it then no longer became acceptable to force or encourage women to be in relationships where they’re not sexually attracted to the man. Since most women aren’t attracted to most men, the inherent trade off for most men having frequent sex is the unhappiness of most women.

Bringing back assortative mating would require a societal thought shift back towards “sex is for the man, what women want doesn’t matter” acknowledging that it’s much easier to please sexually the majority of men, compared to the women that all want the top percentile of men.